Music with a Touch of Heaven
Up now is something of a sub-culture colletor's thing... starting in the early 1960s, American Airlines began to make available recordings of their in-flight audio program to the public. I don't know if these were sold via retail, or if you had to buy them from American, but they are pretty sought-after tapes. Each side runs 92-3 minutes, so you have a little over three hours of music to soothe the savage frightened flyer. Each program was 'sponsored' by a particular record company, this one being Kapp records. Even though they were recorded at 3 3/4 ips, the audio quality on these was really really good, even if the music wasn't 'cutting edge' for the times.
Since Kapp was the 'sponsor', we have a mixture of late Louis Armstrong, some early Burt Bacharach, some Jack Jones, some Hugo Winterhalter, and a LOT of Roger Williams (as he was a Kapp 'feature artist'). The mixture is pretty darn good, thouth, and somewhat harkens back to the day of the mid 1960s 'Beautiful Music' format one would hear on FM stereo broadcast stations in the USA at the time.
This tape, from 1966, is Popular Program No. 16 in the series, "...exactly as heard on American Airlines Astrovision."
I am going to admit something right here and now... I am a lazy sod. This tape runs over 93 minutes per side, and there's no way I am going to break out all the tracks... all 67 of them!
(ADDENDUM)
I changed my mind... I went ahead and split out all 67 tunes, tagged them using my bulk tagger, and now they're in three archives of 30-some songs each. So, no complainin' outta any youse! You can split them up however you want to, make CDs or just chucnk it on to one big MP3 CDR with the other stuff (like I do for commuting).
Here are the three archives:
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Cover scans are here:
The front...
The back...
I have a couple more of these, let me know if there is an interest and I'll post them... one I know of has Command and Westminster as the 'feature labels', so you KNOW there's gonna be some Enoch Light and Dick Hyman on THAT one!
Martini and a pillow, sir?
posted by The Impaler at 3:48 PM
6 Comments:
Your wish is my command! I am encoding Popular Program No. 10 as I type this, with the feature label being 20th Century Records. This one is from a couple of years earlier than No. 16, as right out of the box you get the theme from "Those Magnificent Men and their Flying Machines".
I'd expect No. 10 to be up sometime in the next couple of days as I need to make a couple of compilation CDs for a birthday present tomorrow.
I have one more after this, but it is a classical programme, so I guess I had better haunt eBay and be ready to drop some bucks on more of these.
If you hadn't noticed, I changed the format of the post, I hope it isn't too confusing!
Thanks again for your patience and support :)
12:13 AM
Yes, I wouldn't mind more of these - what a tremendous selection!
Looking forward to the 20th Century Records compilation - I remember that this label had some Art Tatum.
Thanks so much.
Regards - Mel.
5:35 AM
let me add my voice to the chorus of pleading for more of these... this one was indeed fantastic! thanks a bunch for encoding and posting...
4:00 PM
Just this: Superb collection!
/Peter
2:56 AM
Dear friend:
I'm so sorry for my bad english. My home language is portuguese, but I wish give you my thanks for your amazing, wonderful,work. This tape is a historical document and now i could take it because your kindness.
Thank you very very much.
Roberto Alves - Brasil
6:54 PM
Fantastic collections, keep them coming.
Thanks for all your hard work
4:52 AM
Post a Comment
<< Home